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Meet Melissa Veal, wig maker at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Maloo wears a purple shawl and granny glasses. Her hair, very important in the context of this story, is short, white, cute and swoops backward. She's 52, a native of Canada and warm. She keeps a coon hound curled at her feet and is prone to saying things such as "I didn't rescue this dog, this dog rescued me." Her office at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier does not have a window: It is a small, white-painted cinder-block cell, made all the more claustrophobic by the human hair and eyeless faces that surround her. Indeed, a few shelves above her desk, the frazzled, hippie tresses of Stevie Nicks rested on a Styrofoam head.